Robert Jackson (Wantage)

Robert Jackson (24 September 1946-) was the Conservative Party MP for Wantage from 10 June 1983 to 11 April 2005, preceding Ed Vaizey.

Biography
Robert Jackson was born in Nkana, Northern Rhodesia in 1946, the son of a copper mine worker. He became president of the Oxford Union and worked as a political advisor to several ministers before being elected as an MEP for Upper Thames from 1979 to 1983 and as the Conservative Party MP for Wantage in 1983. Jackson was a liberal and a supporter of the European Union, and he supported the reduction in the age of consent for gay men, opposed Conservative leader Michael Howard's incoherent public services policies, opposed the Iraq War, and opposed the dangers of Euroscepticism. On 15 January 2005, he retired from Parliament and defected to the Labour Party.